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OS 9: I’m glad you’re dead

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Steve Jobs kicked off a killer keynote today by declaring OS 9 legally dead. I'm glad Apple has finally taken that moribund 80's relic off of life support and let it pass away in peace. The future is now here for Apple, and it looks pretty sweet. In case you don't follow the Mac scene, I'm talking about OS X 10.2, aka "Jaguar," which Jobs unveiled today. Here's some of the coolness from it that caught my eye:

Quartz Extreme: Basically, it's hardware accelerated Quartz rendering done through OpenGL. OS X has really been needing this since it came out, so I'm glad it's finally here. (Of course, as with anything Mac, there are those who're happy with Aqua's performance as it is now. Fine then, don't upgrade.) The name "Quartz Extreme" has rightfully struck many as woefully late 90's. I think it could be worse, though: at least it isn't spelled with some kind of l33t mix of caps and lowercase. Anyway, I for one am gonna start calling it QuartzGL from now on, as was proposed in this thread.

The thing that really set people off (including me) about this tech, was the fact that at the beginning it seemed that it would require a vid card with 32MB RAM. I just bought my 667 TiBook + 16 MB ATI Radeon in November, so I was none too pleased that I'd be left behind. However, later revelations have shown that what's really necessary is the hardware T&L, and that Radeon cards with 16MB will still run QuartzGL--just not "optimally."

The burning question for me about this Quartz overhaul is what will happen to the Carbon font rendering? I hope it improves, because as a writer this has to be the area of OS X that I'm the least happy with. The font rendering in Word X is very, very poor--the spacing is way out of wack, the aliasing is muddy, etc. I dunno whether this is Apple's fault, Microsoft's fault, or both parties' fault, but I hope it's fixed, soon.

Inkwell: Apple is integrating the Newton's handwriting recognition into the OS, so any app that takes text input will take handwriting as well. Um, groovy, I guess. It sounds like it's geared towards graphics folks who don't want to switch between the tablet and a keyboard.

Rendezvous: This is an open, automatic P2P configuration protocol that Apple is working on with IBM and others. It's essentially a "zero configuration" P2P networking and file sharing standard that will have the RIAA rescinding that Grammy they recently gave Apple. More info can be found, here. Will this catch on, or will it go the way of the ADC? Who knows...

Sherlock 3: This looks so much like Watson that it's prompted some speculation in the Forum that Apple actually bought or licensed the software from Karelia. In any case, I was always too cheap to shell out for Watson, so I'll be digging this when it's released.

I've only scratched the surface of this update with the above list. Here's a bit more, from the Mac Central coverage.

Jaguar promises something for everyone. On the Unix front, the update includes FreeBSD 4.4, GCC 3, IPv6 and IPSec, the CUPS printing engine, LDAP, and Kerberos full-authentication service. "Mac OS X is the best Unix platform on the desktop, and we're going to make it better," said Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.

On the Windows front, Jaguar adds SMB browsing and sharing, built-in PPTP VPN security, and Active Directory support. Educational users will benefit from additions such as NetInstall and NetBoot, improved network management, and printer sharing "so that next school year, they can begin to adopt Mac OS X more widely," Schiller said.

The Jaguar update will be available late this summer, and I'll be in line at the Apple store to pick it up (if it's a paid update, which it probably will be). And as I stand in line, I'll be thinking about how much of a pain it was that I had to call Microsoft today to activate a new Windows XP install. I was quizzed by a service rep about how many machines it's on, what hardware I replaced to trigger the activation, etc. I lied to them, of course, because I was afraid that if they knew I was activating an install that's under Virtual PC 5 for OS X then they'd hang up on me ;)